


destined to conquer gallifrey (and stand in its ruins)

by gardevoire



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, end of the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 17:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17064425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardevoire/pseuds/gardevoire
Summary: A second meeting, at the end of all things.Or:The door creaks open, and a lone man steps out. He is unfamiliar, but dressed in a dark suit, with a pair of dark glasses dangling from between his fingers, and she thinks,well it could hardly be anyone else.





	destined to conquer gallifrey (and stand in its ruins)

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this about a year ago, and never felt like it was _quite_ finished. I did want to publish it though, so tidied it up recently and here we are.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

She returns, eventually, to the reality bubble. Times it perfectly, arrives just as her past self steps inside the TARDIS. Three minutes to hell.

She closes her eyes, tries to remember. It’s difficult, but then again, only things that are are ever worth doing. Even so, she can picture only fragments, flashes. Decades spent travelling the universe, seeing the stars, and all she has to show for it are fleeting images. Illusions. She thinks it must have been lovely. Vaguely remembers wide brown eyes and a kind smile and wonders if it would have been better to forget all at once, the way the Doctor did.

Behind her, a blue box de-materialises, that familiar _whoosh_ and the breeze caressing her skin. Nevada. She contemplates, not for the first time, breaking the time loop. Going inside, seeing her younger self and Clara and the Doctor. Asking for a different ending.

Another sound pierces the silence. Actually, the same sound as before. She turns.

Still brand new and ancient and the bluest blue ever.

_(She was at the wedding. And the funeral. Not in that order, which was unfortunate.)_

The door creaks open, and a lone man steps out. He is unfamiliar, but dressed in a dark suit, with a pair of dark glasses dangling from between his fingers, and she thinks, _well it could hardly be anyone else._

“Me,” he acknowledges. Inclines his head.

She turns back to watch the death of the universe. “Which one are you?”

He perches on the side of her chair, watches the inferno with her. “Thirteenth, of this regeneration cycle,” he says pensively. “If we’re talking total number of bodies, well…” Smiles, strange and sharp. “Suffice it to say I’ve been around.”

Flames lick at the edges of the scene. Tendrils of light, brushing against the bubble and then receding again, like tidal waves. It’s very bright. He puts on his glasses.

“Why are you here?” She asks, because it’s the end of the universe; they may as well talk. She wonders how old he is. _Not as old as Me,_ she thinks, and tries, again, to remember Clara.

He looks at her like he knows what she’s thinking. He probably does.

He shrugs. “Last body. We all have to die sometime.” Looks out at a dying universe. “Thought I might as well go out with a bang.”

“You should have gone back to the start, then,” she says, because they both know it always ends with a whimper. A half-formed breath. A whispered word. _Let me be brave._

She stands by her own words from that day (actually this day, technically only around five minutes ago).

“It was sad,” she says, testing the waters.

Her companion (yes, she acknowledges and appreciates the irony) turns his head to look at her again, and he is as familiar and unfamiliar as he has been in each of his incarnations. Perhaps she does recognise him. Perhaps she does not. Perhaps he goes by a new name now. She has questions: they are on the tip of her tongue, but now is not yet the time to ask.

For a long while, he says nothing. She counts twenty seconds in her head (only one minute, now), and finally he nods.

“Yes it was,” he says. “But it was also beautiful.” He presses a button on the side of his glasses and the whole scene slows to a stop.

She looks out at that thin screen separating them from disintegration. Before, there were colours and light and everything had been so alive even though it was dying. Now, there is only stillness. Wisps of heat locked mid-curl; spiralling patterns of light paralysed as if trapped in a glossy photograph; time itself locked in a strange suspension, like a coiled spring.

She sits up straighter. “What have you done?”

He taps the temple of his glasses, then takes them off. Wipes the lenses. Folds them away into his coat. “Created a pocket in time. Much more powerful than a reality bubble.”

“How are you sustaining it?”

“Brilliantly,” he replies, and smiles out at a snapshot of a dying universe.

“Will it last forever?” she asks.

“No,” he allows. “Just a very long time.”

_Close enough,_ she thinks. “She died,” is what she says.

Beside her, there is movement. When she turns, he is holding a cup of tea. “Who did?”

“Your friend.” _My friend._

His fingers tap a delicate rhythm on the rim of the cup. “I don’t remember her.”

“Yes, you do.”

 

* * *

 

The universe dies at a maddeningly slow rate. Her past self had sat there for months, bathed in the brilliance of relentless destruction, as stars were eaten away and planets neatly obliterated. This time, she will need only wait another fifty seconds, once the time bubble collapses. After that, the ending—inevitable.

She supposes he could just make another one.

After a while, he speaks again. “She went back to Gallifrey.”

There is a lone strand of starlight, separated from the other fiery tendrils. Luminescent enough on its own; shining like a sea of diamonds. There used to be a planet covered in diamonds. She thinks she’s visited, at some point in her life. Clara might have been there; she probably had been. She considers checking her journals, then remembers they perished centuries ago. What a shame. “Yes,” she says, because she wants to gauge his reaction. “She knew when it was time.” She levels him with a gaze she knows looks alien on her still-youthful face.

“I stayed there,” she says abruptly. Adds, when he glances at her, bemused, “On Gallifrey. Not for too long: Time Lords just aren’t all that interesting—“ “Hear, hear,” she hears him mutter, under his breath “—but just for a few years.”

He doesn’t appear particularly engaged. She studies him carefully, wonders how to put her thoughts into words.

“I did a lot of research into the Hybrid prophecy,” she continues. “The Time Lords had examined it in such detail, I was sure they knew who it was.”

“The thing is,” she says, “it seems to have existed for so long that no one really knows where it originated from. There was always a lot of chatter about it, among the immortals. Many of them did seem to think it was me.” Jack had known better, though. He’d been the one to suggest that it might have been two people. He’d had a distant, far away look of longing in his eyes as he’d said it, and she’d thought of the section in her journals titled “Rose Tyler”. Or perhaps he’d been thinking of Donna Noble. So many touched by the same being. So many irrevocably destroyed.

This train of thought led her, inevitably, back to Clara Oswald. Once, she’d had a photo of the two of them, taken on some wild adventure, but it had burned in a fire, long ago. _Wide brown eyes. Kind smile._

“It took me a long time, but, with the help of a very talented archaeologist—” beside her, he tenses, “—I tracked down what I think to be the oldest copy of the prophecy, perhaps even the original.”

She turns to look at him again. “You know, it doesn’t actually mention that the Hybrid had to be from two warrior races. It just says, “crossbred from two ancient warriors”. Funny, because all that confusion about the Time Lords and the Daleks was for nothing, wasn’t it? It was all just a translation error.”

He raises an eyebrow. “That does seem rather anticlimactic, but, why tell me this? I thought you’d decided on the meaning of the Hybrid.”

“That was before,” she says. _Before I saw the universe. Before I widened my gaze. Before I saw the truth revealed before my very eyes._

She leans back in her seat, settles herself comfortably. Stares out into soon-to-be nothingness. “Not long after I left Gallifrey,” she begins again, “it was invaded.”

“There have been no hostile incursions on Gallifrey since the Time War,” he says, like plucking a fact from a textbook.

She tilts her head slightly. “So perhaps they weren’t hostile.”

“Okay,” he says slowly, appearing somewhat amused. “So who were they, then?”

“Oh, a couple of renegade Time Lords,” she responds, watches a shadow of an emotion flicker across his face—recognition, perhaps. Respect, if she’s lucky. “Deranged, really. Demolished the old regime in order to build a new one in its place. A new Time Lord Empire.”

“Destined to conquer Gallifrey, and stand in its ruins,” the man says, something of a smile playing on his lips.

“Rassilon overthrown. A new President instated, a new Chancellor. They called it “the Great Era of Change.” Many planets had flocked to the Time Lords’ side, once they realised the potential of such an alliance. She’d met beings who’d cried at the prospect of visiting Gallifrey. But so few had been granted access; the Time Lords’ home world had been sealed off, an almost-mythical entity where only the best and brightest were permitted.

She’d visited just once. Caught a glimpse of their fearless leaders, side by side, a dazzling combination. A hybrid. _The_ Hybrid.

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, they sit in silence. She stares into unmoving space. He sips his tea. Both lost in thought.

Eventually, she figures she may as well get her answers. If the universe is going to end in fifty seconds (give or take a very long time), she wants to solve its greatest mystery.

“I was at the funeral,” she says. It had been an enormously grand affair. Citizens from thousands of planets flocked to see it, if even just from space. No familiar faces, though. Everyone who might have recognised him for the figure he’d once been, long gone.

“It was sad,” the man says, seemingly unmoved, though his eyes belie his indifference; they are filled with such a deep ache and longing that she almost pities him.

“But not beautiful,” she finishes for him.

“He wouldn’t have wanted it to be.”

“After the ceremony, there were a lot of conspiracy theories being passed around.” She picks idly at a thread on her trousers. “The identity of the body was masked, and his other half was never seen again. Many weren’t sure who’d actually died, that day. The Empire went on for a few more millennia. With time, Gallifrey fell, once more.” Lost without the guidance and direction of its figureheads, the Shining Star of the Seven Systems had, over time, descended once again into disrepair. Though only one had died, they were, nonetheless rudderless, completely adrift; in the ensuing chaos and tragedy, the other had simply vanished. Legends stated he simply couldn’t live without his mirror. It was a tragic tale, or so she’d been told.

She’d known, though. Heard other tales of a lonely traveller. Crossing the universe, as always. Seeing the stars. Saving them, on occasion. Sometimes doing more harm than good. That ancient, well-sung song. A solo, this time.

“Which brings me to my point,” she says, and he looks at her. “You didn’t answer my initial question.”

He begins to reply, undoubtedly about to repeat something along the lines of _thirteen_ and _dying,_ but she speaks over him. Repeats the question. “Which one are you?”

“The Doctor, or the Master?”

He laughs, and she thinks he might look a bit impressed.

“Some would say that it doesn’t matter, anymore,” he says.

She allows a somewhat sad smile to play on her lips. “There isn’t anyone around to say anything, anymore.

 

* * *

 

They watch the universe for just a little longer. Eventually, he stands, and places an empty tea cup beside her chess set.

“I don’t think I’m ready to go, yet,” he says. Brushes imaginary lint off his clothes. “Still a lot to see, planets to save, planets to destroy.”

“You’re not going to answer me.” It’s not a question.

“What does it matter?” He asks, curious. “You implied it yourself. The Hybrid. A crossbreed of two ancient warriors.” A faint smirk. “Like an Osgood Box. The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend.” He looks at her. “Everyone’s a hybrid.” _Even you_ hangs in the air between them, like static electricity, or those creeping tendrils of fire, frozen in their devastating path.

“Will you know when it’s time?” She studies the tilt of his chin, the set of his shoulders, tries to compare him to a half-remembered memory.

“I won’t be long,” he says. “Give me, let’s say, a couple seconds?” He turns to leave. She watches him go.

“The universe will take a long time to die if you keep coming back,” she calls out, scrutinises the slightly tense line of his shoulders and wonders if she can force him to reveal himself. He does pause, framed in the doorway of his (or not his) TARDIS.

“It’ll get there eventually,” he replies at last. “The long way round.” The door slams shut, and the blue box fades. This time, he even takes off the parking brake.

She turns back to the inferno. Outside, time starts moving again.

_forty-five seconds to hell,_ she thinks, and waits.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully the summary didn't give it away! I tried to keep it pretty vague and ambiguous.
> 
> I've always wondered what the Doctor would do at the end of their life (this is _not_ an indication that it _is_ the Doctor, by the way). And I felt like the ending of S9 didn't tie up that Hybrid thread as neatly as I wanted it to, so I wrote my own. Then, this story just sort of came together.
> 
> By the way, if you're wondering which one it is, I think it could be either. Or both. I tried to write it that way, at least.


End file.
